Katy Perry: Love in VOGUE

Katy Perry covers the new issue of VOGUE, her very first time. It’s high fashion on a farm. I ...don’t love the styling. Mostly because it’s kind of the same styling we expect of Katy Perry. Bold dramatic lips, bright dramatic colours. What would a stripped down Katy Perry look like? Is that possible? Or is it by design? I don’t see Katy Perry the way I see Lady Gaga who must adhere so strictly to that image she’s created -- part freak, part monster, always provocative. That Dolce & Gabbana dress that falls off the shoulder with the straw hat is spectacular though. And if you stretch hard enough, you can even attach a gossip angle to one of the portraits.

But there’s other gossip from the VOGUE article that comes a lot easier.

Katy meets the writer at San Ysidro Ranch. Sound familiar? This is where she and Robert Pattinson were seen together at that wedding rehearsal shortly after his breakup from Kristen Stewart was confirmed last month. It seems to be where Katy goes when she wants to get away. The interview takes place before that though, and before the MET Gala in New York, where Stewart and Pattinson last stepped out as a couple. So the writer didn’t have the situation on her question list. She did however ask about Katy’s other relationships -- Russell Brand and John Mayer. Perry is surprisingly candid, offering a lot more detail that we normally get from a celebrity profile, especially for a celebrity with her profile.

She describes Brand as a “magical man”. And then she goes on to reveal how he broke up with her:

“He’s a very smart man, and I was in love with him when I married him. Let’s just say I haven’t heard from him since he texted me saying he was divorcing me December 31, 2011.”

Well, sh-t, that was specific.

And she goes on, with even more detail, about why it couldn’t work. Specifically -- again, this girl doesn’t cheap out on details -- how he turned on her for not being what he considered a conventional wife:

“(Russell is) Hysterical in some ways. Until he started making jokes about me and he didn’t know I was in the audience, because I had come to surprise him at one of his shows. So. Hysterical to a point. I mean, I have to claim my own responsibility in things. I do admit that I was on the road a lot. Although I invited him time and time again, and I tried to come home as much as I possibly could. You saw that in the movie.” Katy Perry: Part of Me, a documentary released last year that has garnered $32 million worldwide to date, covers the period before, during, and after her time with Brand. “That wasn’t edited to leave footage out—there wasn’t any footage of him. At first when I met him he wanted an equal, and I think a lot of times strong men do want an equal, but then they get that equal and they’re like, I can’t handle the equalness. He didn’t like the atmosphere of me being the boss on tour. So that was really hurtful, and it was very controlling, which was upsetting. I felt a lot of responsibility for it ending, but then I found out the real truth, which I can’t necessarily disclose because I keep it locked in my safe for a rainy day. I let go and I was like: This isn’t because of me; this is beyond me. So I have moved on from that.”

Of course, that’s only her side of the story. And he very well may counter with how he couldn’t live with and up to the demands of her rock star party life. But the fact is, she has convinced herself that that is why it ended, which is a perspective to their split that we didn’t hear much about immediately after they unravelled.

As for John Mayer, when asked about their status -- at the time, and this, remember, was before the speculation started with Robert Pattinson -- in one word:

“Over.”

Bless her, she elaborates. And she clarifies that hooking up with Mayer was not a rebound, or an attempt to make Russell Brand jealous. In fact, she still has feelings for him:

“No, not at all. No, I was madly in love with him. I still am madly in love with him.” With John Mayer? That wasn’t what I expected to hear at all. “All I can say about that relationship is that he’s got a beautiful mind,” she says. “Beautiful mind, tortured soul. I do have to figure out why I am attracted to these broken birds.”

That’s the part I wasn’t expecting. The declaration -- in VOGUE! -- that she’s still “madly in love with him”. At 28 years old, having been a superstar now for over 5 years, by now somewhat inured to all the sh-t that accompanies fame, she still hasn’t learned how to hold back, or you could say she will never want to. It’s not like Katy Perry is stupid. At least Katy Perry isn’t so stupid to think that she could make that kind of a pronouncement and not expect it to be the major takeaway in the coverage of her interview.

“Katy Perry is still madly in love with John Mayer!”

It’ll be all over the place soon if it isn’t already by the time you read this. And since I exist for gossip, and the consumption of this kind of information, I love her for it. Not necessarily for her candour, whether or not it’s deliberate and manufactured, but for the strategy behind and her willingness to play game, and not f-cking complain about it. Too often we have to listen to the protestations of celebrities who approach these situations with a wall first as if it’s not a give and take relationship. What we end up with then are boring reads. No one wins when it’s a boring read. Katy seems to understand this. Madonna used to understand this. Back in the days of Blonde Ambition, she said as much and very publicly. I remember watching her on Arsenio Hall after she was featured in Vanity Fair. When he brought it up during their chat, the more controversial parts from the article, she knew exactly what she was doing.